5 ideas
| 17950 | The logos enables us to track one particular among a network of objects [Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: The logos (the definition) is a summary statement of the path within a network of objects that one will have to follow in order to locate a particular member of that network. | |
| From: Alexander Nehamas (Episteme and Logos in later Plato [1984], p.234) | |
| A reaction: I like this because it confirms that Plato (as well as Aristotle) was interested in the particulars rather than in the kinds (which I take to be general truths about particulars). |
| 17951 | A logos may be short, but it contains reference to the whole domain of the object [Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: A thing's logos, apparently short as it may be, is implicitly a very rich statement since it ultimately involves familiarity with the whole domain to which that particular object belongs. | |
| From: Alexander Nehamas (Episteme and Logos in later Plato [1984], p.234) | |
| A reaction: He may be wrong that the logos is short, since Aristotle (Idea 12292) says a definition can contain many assertions. |
| 9463 | Classical logic is bivalent, has excluded middle, and only quantifies over existent objects [Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Classical logic (of Whitehead, Russell, Gödel, Church) is a two-valued system of propositional and predicate logic, in which all propositions are exclusively true or false, and quantification and predication are over existent objects only. | |
| From: Dale Jacquette (Intro to I: Classical Logic [2002], p.9) | |
| A reaction: All of these get challenged at some point, though the existence requirement is the one I find dubious. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |